Freedom
by Trixi Summers
Summary: A one-shot of Buffy's life after Buffy. She thinks about her life as a Slayer on a beach somewhere and makes a decision.


Freedom

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Buffy or Dawn, I do not know Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, and I do not own the Game of Life.

*

"From the North to the South, Ebudae onto Khartoum,  
From the deep sea of Clouds to the Island of the Moon,  
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never been,  
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never seen.  
We can sail, we can sail... let the Orinoco flow,  
We can sail, we can sail...  
Sail away, sail away, sail away!"

~ Enya, _Orinoco__ Flow_

*

For once in her life she felt free. Free from the constant upheaval demonic forces sought after and wreaked on her every night. She no longer had to deal with those constant distractions. She was finally free.

Now, there were others who would look out for the demons and vampires. Teenage girls with the same power as her: millions of them all over the world. Now, there wouldn't be just one girl in the entire world who would fight these distractions. There would be hundreds of slayers fighting for their lives and the lives of everyone around them.

She thought of this for awhile. It was early morning as she walked in the waves on the beach. The water felt cool to her bare feet as it crashed on them, the bubbles rising on the surface of the wave. 

The sun had barely risen when she had woken up, prepared to wake up to someone trying to choke her. It took her awhile to realize that she wasn't the only Slayer anymore and that she was safe on the beach with her sister. She looked around for awhile and decided to go for a walk to fully digest this.

Even if Faith had been a Slayer at the same time as Buffy, she always felt as if she was the _only Slayer in Sunnydale. She hadn't been corrupted; therefore she was the only rightful Slayer. It took her awhile to get used to the idea that someone else was as strong as her and wasn't a vampire when Faith came back to Sunnydale for the second time. Even after that, she had been still a little shaky with sharing the title of Slayer with Faith._

Then the group of potential slayers voted against her and employed Faith in her place. She had been shocked, and not just because they were voting her out, but because she had been happy to leave. Her whole career as a Slayer, she had always wanted to be the one who wasn't in charge all of the time. And she had finally gotten her wish.

But you can't get rid of the feeling of routine all in one night. She felt stifled that night, as if something inside of her couldn't get out. She found herself wanting to go back to the Scooby Gang and take charge again. And at the same time, she felt hurt at the thought that they didn't trust her judgement anymore and had thrown her out.

Then Spike came by her new home with more information on the First and had comforted her. It felt so good to be in his arms and not be sleeping with him, but just sleeping beside him. He could make her so angry, but at the same time he could give her all the courage she would need and she loved him for it. In his arms, she decided that night that she wouldn't just abandon her friends, and Faith, and the potential slayers. Even if they didn't want her, they still needed her.

It would turn out that she was right. Once she found the potentials again, she found that Faith had accidentally led them into a trap. And again, she found that her feelings were unpredictable. She thought she would feel happy that Faith's judgement had led them into a trap too, but found she couldn't. She can't describe what she had been feeling that day, especially when she saw Faith next, lying on a bed, in another coma.

Then in the victory over the First, she lost Spike, but he had given her something she couldn't have imagined he could give, even if it was sort of indirectly. He alone held the power to destroy the Hellmouth forever and had given her freedom from it, and from him. 

She discovered that day that she was ready for a new, normal life. She was ready to settle down, get a good job, find the perfect man for a husband and take care of her sister. She was ready to be normal.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to look out to the ocean. Its waters were glistening in the still-rising sun of the morning and she could see a small boat sailing far away in the distance. The ocean was like freedom. It was beautiful, and she felt drawn to it. She could sail for days on end and she wouldn't care. 

She would take her sister and escape everything and sail to a far away land, probably Spain, where she would have to learn the language from a nice old woman who would take them in and care for them. There, she would get a job as a secretary to a rich man, or a job as a seamstress, even though she didn't care for sewing or paperwork. She would put Dawn through school all the way to university and give her a good education, something she never fully received. 

And she would meet a man who was kind and sincere, and hopefully not of the living dead, and she would marry him and have two kids. They would buy a house on the coast and get a dog, and maybe even a cat. They would live happily -- her, her sister, her husband and kids. And if it didn't work out between them, she would take Dawn and her kids, and even the kind old woman who took her in, if she allowed it, and they would all sail away to another land, maybe a little village in France.

That was her plan. Maybe she would fulfill it some day.

"Buffy?" a voice behind her asked. She turned to see her sister, Dawn, standing behind her in a flowery summer dress that was blowing in the wind, something she was 'borrowing' from Buffy's closet. Dawn was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and when she finished, she looked up at Buffy in askance. "What are you doing up?" Her expression turned sarcastic. "You're not about to cook, are you?"

Buffy snorted. Cooking was not one of her favourite activities either. "I was just thinking," she said after a pause. "What do you think of the North of Spain at this time of the year?"

"Planning on having a siesta?" Dawn asked as Buffy turned to walk back to the small cottage on the beach they were renting. "'Cause you know we could just go back to bed. Nobody is going to hate us terribly if we sleep in like yesterday. Your job doesn't start until the afternoon."

"Actually, I was thinking of sailing away to Spain," Buffy told her. The pair walked up the wooden steps to the wooden patio where they washed the sand off their feet using a bucket of water they dipped their feet into. "That is, if you'd come with me."

Dawn giggled at the thought of travelling to Spain. The idea seemed so insane, she had to laugh. 

Buffy took offence at Dawn's laughing. "I'm serious," she told her sister defiantly. "It would be a hard road to take though." She thought about that sentence.  "Or maybe it would be a hard ocean to take."

"Duh, dumb-ass," Dawn chortled.

"Eh, watch the language," Buffy scolded as she opened the screen door and they walked inside the cool cottage. It was a small cottage, the biggest she could get with the amount of money she was getting for being a clerk at the local grocery store for half the day, even if she worked six half-days each week and a whole day on Sundays. The town they were in was too small to get much of a profit out of working there.

The main room of the cottage consisted of the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and a small space in between big enough to lie on the floor and play the Game of Life. The bedroom had only one big bed with a canopy that Buffy and Dawn alternated in sleeping on, using a pull-out bed from the couch in the living room as the other place to sleep. Most of the stuff in the cottage was old, but it was still usable and Buffy loved the charm of this.

She sat down at the dining room table and looked over at Dawn, who was leaning against a rocking chair in the living room, speculating the idea.

Seven weeks later, both new and old friends were gathered on the beach, waiting for them to sail off. Buffy had Giles to thank for most of the preparations of their journey, including the yacht he had bought for her and the lessons he gave her on how to use it.

The goodbyes were heartfelt and teary, especially with her old friends, Willow and Xander. She had always thought of the prospect of never seeing them again over the weeks it took to get them to the stage where they were about to sail off, but Buffy never thought of how she would actually feel during the time it took to say goodbye.

And when it came to hugging Giles, he offered to go with her, just in case. But she knew she had to remind him he still had duties as a Watcher to the new slayers all over the world and he would be able to visit her whenever his journeys took him to Spain. They would talk to each other everyday when she and Dawn landed in a port in Spain, anyways, and she would send postcards and letters to her friends to let them know how the two of them were doing.

After Dawn said goodbye to her own friends and Buffy had reluctantly hugged Faith and told her to watch over the others, they got onto the yacht. After a false start, the yacht began to sail away from the small pier it had been tied up on. Their friends walked all the way to the end of the pier to wave goodbye to them, and as soon as Buffy was sure they were a good distance away, she turned around and waved back to them.

They were sailing to a new destiny, far away from her old one. And she felt gladness in her heart. She had a path to her new destiny, she had her sister with her, and she had the memory of her mother by her side. What more could she want?

She was free.****


End file.
